External Hard Drive Question - how can I tell the actual drive in the enclosure?

[JasonDawg18]

Hi guys,

I had this Iogear 320 GB Hard Drive http://www.amazon.com/Iogear-Combo-External-Tri-Select-GHD335C320/dp/B00083Y4M4.

It just died on me, and the guys at the Data Recovery place I'm using said that if I can find an exact replica of the drive, they'd probably be able to recover it for me.

I cannot find the exact drive yet (see details below). However, I had the thought that if I could find someone who had the exact model of IOGear External Drive, that maybe their drive would match (or be close enough for it to work).

Here's the question: How can I tell what Model Number, DCM, Date of the assembly of the drive, and country of origin, without taking the drive enclosure apart? Can you tell that from the drive being plugged in? Or, would it be on the box or documentation somewhere?

I'm really hoping/needing to recover that data.

Thanks for your response.

Jason

Drive info:
Western Digital Drive
Date: June 14, 2005
Model number: wd 3200sb-01kma0
DCM: DSBACAJCA
Country: Malaysia

 

[sickmacdoc]

Hi Jason-

I really don't think you are going to find that detailed info readily available, particularly since Iogear and other third party external drive manufacturers can change the drives they use inside their cases on moments notice (as long as the capacity is the same for the model they are manufacturing).

I have sure never seen anything on the outside of a box anyway- and most don't even tell you if they are IDE/PATA or SATA drives within the enclosure.

Finding an identical model drive is really only important in data recovery if it has been determined that the drive's logic board has failed- in which case they can swap one out from a known good drive pretty simply on modern drives. Have they already determined that that is the cause of your drive's failure?

OK, so I just did a Google search and see that the drive in question is a 320
Gb IDE/PATA drive (you can see a lot of sources for it by using wd3200sb as a search term in Google). That manufacturing date range may still be valid since IDE drives are much slower selling than SATA drives now days, but that part would be hard to tell for sure. Some places have it as a deactivated (normally meaning discontinued at least in newegg.com's case) but other places still have it available.

Other large data recovery places maintain huge inventories of older drives for just this purpose, so you might want to check in with On Track Data Recovery Services for a free quote as they do have a LOT of drives to use!

 

[JasonDawg18]

Thanks. I feel like a "noob" with these questions, this is just all new to me.

I understand that IOmega could've used any 320gb HD. However, I think I'd have a shot at finding one with the same drive. Is there any way, using something like System Profiler, to tell the CDM, Date, and Country? I'm just wondering if I found people that have the same drive, if they could tell if it were a match.

I'll check with that company you told me about on Monday.

Thanks!

Jason

 

[sickmacdoc]

No unfortunately there is no utility that I have stumbled across in the past 10 years that will give you that kind of information (that specific). I think you would have to look at the face of the drive itself. Perhaps one choice (again if they are sure that is the problem with your drive at the place you have already spoken to) would be to order one of the raw drives from a place that has no restocking fees and look at the label on the drive itself- but that of course is a long shot.